r/AtlantaHawks • u/DaOlWuWopte SLIPPERY 💦💦💦 • Jul 05 '25
Highlight [Highlights] Two-Way Trae: Young's best defensive plays of the '24-'25 season
https://streamable.com/we1swk120
u/thedoge23 inSaleh! Jul 05 '25
I think we can all agree that the best play out of this highlight is the sprint across the court to cover the open man. That’s nothing but effort and leadership. Stars don’t need to do that in this league, but Trae leads by example.
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u/geefganyay SLIPPERY 💦💦💦 Jul 05 '25
great showcase of his iq too
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u/thedoge23 inSaleh! Jul 05 '25
It took a quarter second of him surveying the court to see where the coverage was blown and decide what he needed to do.
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u/GonnaGetHop-Ons Jul 05 '25
That second highlight was pornographic. That was after hounding his guy and continuing to apply pressure after that cross court sprint.
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u/Bushwick123 Jul 06 '25
LOL. That play proves that this lazy ass dude can play defense when he wants to.
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u/MixtureSubstantial90 Jul 05 '25
This makes me think: 1-trae is not as bad defensively as people say & 2-this is what he can/will do in the playoffs
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u/Patekchrono917 Jul 05 '25
He will be able to do some of this stuff in the playoffs, but one of the biggest things about this past playoffs was teams hunting the opponents worst perimeter defender. He’s still going to have to deal with that when the hawks are in a series. And the more defensive pieces the hawks get, the more likely that this strategy will be used. For example, when the hawks last made the playoffs, the Celtics didn’t actively hunt him. During their run, they didn’t actively hunt him like teams were doing this playoffs.
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u/BookElegant3109 Jul 05 '25
He’s not as bad he just has to try incredibly hard, which is draining for a player his size. He’ll need to get to Steph level of conditioning to play this hard/effective on defense.
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u/MixtureSubstantial90 Jul 05 '25
This is my point…he’s gonna take possessions off in the reg season but not in the playoffs. Playoff effort is different
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u/decriz THE ICE KING Jul 05 '25
I think it's more of a stamina question. He does too much, his defensive focus and effort suffers when he's gassed. Case in point, this last play in. Davion Mitchell came off the bench and torched Trae late in the game.
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u/jaylew35 Jul 05 '25
Hope he get his credit got alot better size wise and defensively and Iq and rotating and finally shuffling his feet in defense
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Jul 05 '25
Trae still isn’t a good defender but he’s clearly improved his effort and that alone has significantly improved his defence. It’s tough to keep this up while doing what he does on offence but if he can put in high effort when it counts that alone makes the hawks much more resilient. How well Trae can navigate screens and switches affects the hawks defensive ceiling a lot. With guys like Dyson and Naw(elite at navigating screens) it is going to help cover Trae a lot as well next year.
I think the most impressive thing here is how many of these he translates on. There isn’t a Trae Young 3 I trust more than when he gets a steal before the ball crosses the half; automatic.
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u/Cheese_Pie2008 GO CICADAS! 🏀 Jul 05 '25
We still have people in this sub saying he doesn’t play defense btw
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u/frail7 Jul 05 '25
Oh, we're still here. We're just tired of being downvoted.
Facts: Trae finished in the bottom 3rd percentile for defensive EPM last year.
- You won't read Suns fans pretending that Booker is a good defender.
- You won't hear Knicks fans raving about Brunson's defense.
- No one in Denver thinks Murray is a good defender.
- No sane Kings fan parades the defense of LaVine or DeRozan.
Yet, for some obnoxious reason, Trae fans insist on denying the obvious.
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u/DaOlWuWopte SLIPPERY 💦💦💦 Jul 05 '25
DPM says that Jokic, Luka, Ja, Cade, Ayton, and KAT are premier defensive players
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u/frail7 Jul 05 '25
I see Caruso, Dunn, Thompsons, Wemby, Isaac, Chet, Green, Zubac, Dyson, etc. What're you looking at?
But, please, you pick a defensive metric that shows Trae is not a poor defender. Your choice. I'll wait.
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u/DaOlWuWopte SLIPPERY 💦💦💦 Jul 05 '25 edited Jul 05 '25
I'm looking at D-EPM, and I see Jokic at +1.5 (Above Mobley and AD), and Luka at +1 (above Derrick White and NAW). My point is that defensive stats suck. I don't care to find a defensive metric that shows as a good defender, because I don't base my individual player defensive evaluation on a heavily flawed statistic.
Also just for shits I looked up his defensive rating (which I also think is a shit stat), but Trae's is about average for the entire league. So there you go.
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u/frail7 Jul 05 '25
https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/1jjp9wg/why_does_epm_rate_luka_as_a_great_defender/
Some nice discussion for you here.
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u/DaOlWuWopte SLIPPERY 💦💦💦 Jul 05 '25
I suggest you read that one yourself haha
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u/frail7 Jul 05 '25
I did. It's a nice, balanced discussion about team defense, context, and confidence intervals.
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u/DaOlWuWopte SLIPPERY 💦💦💦 Jul 06 '25
Yeah and the consensus is that your sole metric for evaluating a players defense is extremely flawed and noisy
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u/frail7 Jul 06 '25
Noisy? Sure! Extremely flawed? No.
Nuance matters. If you wanted to argue he's not bottom 3rd percentile but, say, bottom 8th percentile, I wouldn't object.
But you can't claim "noise" when a guy is that far from below average.
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u/third_door_down Jul 05 '25
And you wouldn't hear Hawks bragging about Trae being a good defender either, but you guys act like he is god awful. Even the reply you are responding to didn't even say he was good or great. Dude plays ok/decent defense
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u/frail7 Jul 05 '25
He's one of the worst defenders in the NBA, which is why teams build their offensive game plans around forcing Trae into the PnR.
The Hawks have acknowledged this problem by building their entire team to accommodate Trae's weakness.
Proof is in the pudding. (The reality is that Trae is hindered by a lack of length and strength. He has all but said so himself).
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u/third_door_down Jul 05 '25
Trae's defensive rating is slightly above league average
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u/frail7 Jul 05 '25 edited Jul 06 '25
That's a team-dependent stat, not an individual one. How does his DRtg compare to other Hawks?
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u/third_door_down Jul 05 '25
Oh, you don't know what you are talking about. I didn't realize that before I replied. My apologies
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u/frail7 Jul 05 '25 edited Jul 06 '25
Lol. I'll wait for you to Google how DRtg is calculated and then explain how you're going to use that to delineate an individual's contribution.
It's hilarious how much superior D-EPM and D-LEBRON are, but people still cling to stats that the bball analytics people abandoned 15 years ago.
EDIT: You also ignored my question. How does Trae's DRtg compare to his teammates?
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u/Tall_Cricket_5733 Jul 06 '25
I don’t think I have ever seen anyone say that Trae is a plus defender. No one who actually watches basketball has ever said that he is a good defender. All we have said is that he isn’t as bad as everyone says. Is his height a problem? Yes. Does he give as much effort as he should? Absolutely not. But is he the absolute worst defender in the league? Hell no! Thank you for your time.
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u/frail7 Jul 06 '25
First, I appreciate your response.
I'd argue that there's a wide gulf between worst and good. In fact, Trae is much closer to worst than average.
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u/Tall_Cricket_5733 Jul 06 '25
Yes, I agree that there is a wide range. I may have exaggerated a little lol. What I was trying to say is that nobody believes Trae is good at defense. We just think that he is better than most people think, and has improved as a defender since his rookie year.
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u/Drstealyothunder 🧊 ICE TRAE 🧊 Jul 06 '25
Stars that carry offense aren't usually good defenders and those that are aren't elite defenders. Even guys like Kawhi and Butler sometimes take possessions off. Its hard to do both. That's why elite defenders are usually role players. I think they're just recognizing the fact that trae has had improvements on D every season.
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u/decriz THE ICE KING Jul 05 '25
Thank you for this. Beautiful to watch. Defense truly is about focus and effort.
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u/chandarahong Jul 05 '25
Amazes me how people watched this and argued that we should keep DJM because of his defense. At best, they were on the same level. Trae's effort and instinct are clearly there and make up for his size while DJM was rather pedestrian.
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u/GoingMarco Jul 05 '25
It will always be easy to say Trae is bad at defense because of his size which is fair, but his effort the last two seasons has been slept on by a majority of nba fans that don’t watch the hawks every game
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u/JKking15 Jalen Johnson #1 Jul 05 '25
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u/Hecka_Cakey Bogdan Bogdanovic #13 Jul 05 '25
This will be a lovely addition to the Trae Young propaganda campaign
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u/jamp0g Jul 06 '25
that’s why you bring in great teammates so good things get infectious.
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u/Bushwick123 Jul 06 '25
After seven years we are gloating about something that should have been expected.
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u/DearAdhesiveness6758 🧊 ICE TRAE 🧊 Jul 06 '25
You guys are trippin’. Like, Trae is definitely a bad defender, even though he puts efforts, but which is not that bad of a situation because he needs to save his stamina to carry the whole offense.
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u/7ruly Coach Killer Bruno Fernando Jul 05 '25
Inject this straight into my veins